by Mary Amato
Mom said good night, told us to go to sleep, and went downstairs to play her cello.
It was too hot to be under the covers, so the three of us were lying on top of our covers. I couldn’t see either Orville or Amelia, but I could feel them.
As I listened to the sound of Mom tuning up downstairs, I thought about how much fun it is to have another person sleep over. It’s sort of like getting a new member of the family for a night.
I dug my handy flashlight from under my pillow and turned it on. (Riot Brother Rule #19: Always keep a flashlight under your pillow.) “Hey, Amelia,” I whispered. “We have a confession to make.”
“We do?” Orville turned on his flashlight.
Amelia leaned over the cot and pulled her flashlight out of her backpack. “What is it?”
“We thought you would be boring.”
She laughed.
“It’s true,” Orville said. “Sorry about that.”
She shrugged. “I thought you’d be boring, too. Here, watch this.” With her flashlight in one hand, Amelia made a shadow puppet of a snake on the wall with her other hand. I made my hand into a dog and howled. Then Orville made a snake that slithered over, ate my head off, and burped.
Amelia laughed. “That looks like Curly.” She gasped. “Curly! And Slobber! We left them in the shed.”
“Along with that rotten banana,” Orville added.
“Hmm.” I shined the light under my chin so that it made my face look all spooky. “Perhaps we should sneak into the dark of the night and retrieve them.”
Amelia and Orville both grinned.
As quietly as three giant slugs, we grabbed our flashlights and crept down the stairs and out the back door. The air was warm and still. The moon was full and ghostly white.
Amelia stopped. She lifted her arms to the moon and sang in a soft, mysterious voice, “Full moon, full moon, make something funny happen to us soon.” She dropped her arms and explained, “If you sing a tune to the full moon, your wish will come true.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Orville said. “I wonder if something funny will happen.” Then he tripped over the garden hose.
We all laughed.
Amelia shrugged. “See? Works every time.”
“Come on,” I whispered.
Our flashlight beams bounced off the grass and our bare toes. Amelia started giggling because the grass was especially tickly.
We tiptoed to the shed and opened the door. The tools and sleds looked creepy in the dark.
“Curly? Where are you?” Amelia whispered.
Orville shined his light on the lawn mower. Curly was draped over the handle.
“There you are!” Amelia rescued him.
Orville found the stinking banana in the sled and threw it out the door. Slobber was hiding in a flowerpot.
“I’m thinking that Curly needs one more adventure before hitting the hay,” Amelia said.
“I like the way you think,” I said. “What do you have in mind?”
“We could put her in the bathroom sink, and when your mom goes to brush her teeth—”
“Ahhhhhhh!” Orville acted out the scream in a whisper.
Amelia giggled again.
“We’ve put Slobber under her pillow, but never a snake in the sink,” I said. “She won’t be expecting it.”
We closed the shed door and began creeping back across the yard.
Orville laughed his evil laugh. “Moi-ha-ha! This is going to be fu-u-u-un.” His foot slid out from under him, and he hit the grass with a thunk.
“What happened?” Amelia asked.
Orville shined his light on a smooshed mess. “Who would put a rotten banana right here?”
“A Riot Brother with a very short memory,” I said.
“Oh.” He laughed.
We helped him wipe the banana goop off. Then we crept in, put Curly in the bathroom, and snuck back to our room.
Planning a clever joke on someone you love is fun. Carrying it out is even more fun. And waiting for the response is even more fun. As we were tiptoeing up the creaky stairs, I was filled to the brim with happiness. The summer was just beginning, and already we were having a great time.
Meeting a new cousin who turns out to be someone really fun is like finding a million dollars.
“Good night, Amelia,” I whispered. “Good night, Orville.”
“Good night, Riot Brothers,” she whispered back.
I closed my eyes and began to fall asleep.
Let me tell you, there’s nothing like drifting off to sleep after a fun-filled day and hearing the beautiful shriek of your dear mother finding a snake in the sink.
The End
ONE
Tut, Tut, Nut
I woke up nice and early and knew without even looking that Orville and Amelia were still asleep. How did I know? Because they were both snorgling like wild pigs. As anyone who has ever had a sleepover at my house knows, Orville does more than snore—he snorgles. And now you know that Amelia E. Hart snorgles, too. Up until this point in my life, I didn’t even know that girls could snorgle.
I glanced at them to see if they looked like wild pigs.
They did!
I really wanted to take a picture of them so that I’d have something to look at whenever I needed a laugh, but I had to follow Riot Brother Rule #13: Whoever wakes up first has to wake the other. And according to our new rule, I couldn’t wake them up in an ordinary way.
I crept downstairs and got the mop bucket. Quietly, I tiptoed back upstairs and filled it with whitey-tighties, socks, and fluffy white tissues. I climbed on my bed and held the bucket in both hands as if it were very full of water. (It helps to be a good actor.) Then I said, “Yoo-hoo. Orville, Amelia, time for a shower!”
Amelia opened her eyes and saw me standing above them with that big old bucket.
“Orville!” she said. “Wake up!”
Orville’s eyes snapped open. “Wilbur! You wouldn’t—”
“Here it comes!” I tossed the contents of the bucket at them.
“NOOOOOOO!” They covered their heads.
An avalanche of white socks and underpants and tissues landed on them.
I laughed my head off.
Pow! Amelia got me right in the forehead with a sock ball.
“Sock fight!” I cried.
Orville started throwing socks in both directions like a wild, two-handed pitching machine.
When we were socked out, Amelia sighed and said, “What a way to start the day! You guys know how to do it.”
“Thank you, Amelia,” I said. “It’s nice to be appreciated.”
“It certainly is,” Orville said, and put a pair of whitey-tighties on his head.
“That gives me an idea!” Amelia exclaimed. “Let’s play Costume Countdown! You get one minute to use anything you can find to create a costume. Then we guess what we are.” She didn’t wait to find out if we wanted to play. Why would she? Of course we did! She pulled a stopwatch out of her backpack. “You may get something from another room, but you must be back here in one minute. On your mark, get set, go!”
The three of us raced around, grabbing stuff and putting it on. We ran back.
“Time’s up!” she said. “Okay, guess what I am.”
She was standing very straight and was wearing Curly the snake wrapped around her right arm, a T-shirt on her head like a scarf, and a fake beard.
“A fortune-teller?” I guessed.
“No.”
“Santa Claus’s evil twin?” Orville guessed.
She laughed. “No. I am the great Egyptian queen Nefertiti!”
“A queen with a beard?”
“Yep. When she became the pharaoh, she wore a fake beard! Isn’t that cool?”
“Do me next!” Orville yelped. He was wrapped in toilet paper with my striped tie around his neck.
“You’re a daddy mummy!” Amelia said.
“I can’t believe you got it right!” Orville exclaimed.
A
melia bowed.
A chill went up my spine. “This is very strange.”
“What’s so strange?” Orville asked.
“You’ll see after you guess who I am.”
I had a pair of whitey-tighties on my head with two tissues sticking down on either side.
“You’re a sheep?” Orville asked.
“Baaaaad guess,” I said.
“Give us a hint,” Amelia said.
“I’ll tell you that I’m a rich king, but you’ll have to figure out my name.”
“Oh my gosh!” Amelia exclaimed. “This is strange.”
“What?” Orville asked.
“He’s King Tut!” Amelia said, and I nodded. “He looks just like him.” She pulled a book called Egyptian Wonders out of her backpack. “See? Here’s King Tut, except he’s painted gold.”
Orville jumped up, made a King Tut hat for himself, and danced like an ancient Egyptian with his mummy bandages trailing. He sang:
“Orville,” Amelia said. “Sorry to interrupt your song, but don’t you see how strange this is?”
He stopped.
“What’s so strange?” Orville asked.
“We all picked costumes from ancient Egypt,” I explained.
“I think it means that our mission for today must have something to do with Egypt,” Amelia said. She started jumping up and down. “I love ancient Egypt!”
Orville’s costume was giving me a great idea for a mission. “What would be a cool thing in the world to find?”
“A dollar?” Orville guessed.
“Cooler.”
“An air conditioner?” Amelia reasoned.
“Well, that would be cooler. But that wasn’t what I had in mind. I think our mission should be to find a lost mummy!”
“Bingo bongo!” Orville started singing:
He stopped. “You know what King Tut should do?
“What?” we asked.
“Make a mini putt!” Orville said. “He could decorate it with miniature pyramids and call it King Tut Mini Putt! It’s a great idea. Let’s go visit King Tut and tell him about it, and he’ll give us a bunch of gold as a reward!”
“There’s only one problem.” Amelia patted him on the back. “King Tut is dead.”
“That is so sad.” He plucked the tissues out of his hat and blew his nose. “No mini putt for King Tut.”
I said to Amelia, “When you’ve got a brother like Orville, there’s only one thing to do. . . .”
“Put on a King Tut hat and be a nut, nut, nut?” she suggested.
“Bingo bongo!”
TWO
Dung Beetles, Anyone?
What is the first thing to do once you’ve decided that your mission will be to find a lost mummy?
Notify the newspaper? Fly to Egypt? Dig a tunnel in a pyramid?
Wrong.
We showed Amelia our Secret Riot Brother Mission Book.
“Let’s invent our own Riot Brother Hieroglyphics to write down our mission!” she said.
I was beginning to think that there just might be another person in the world with almost as many great ideas as myself.
Here’s what we came up with:
The next step was to pack.
I bet you’re dying to know exactly what you need if you’re going to search for a lost mummy.
Well, here’s the list:
We got dressed and put on our fastest running shoes. As for everything else on the list . . . guess who had it all in her backpack?
You’re right. Amelia!
We headed downstairs, Amelia first, then Orville, then me.
“Wait!” Amelia stopped.
Orville crashed into her, and I crashed into Orville.
“We need one more thing before we go!” she said.
“Breakfast?” Orville asked.
“Okay, we need breakfast, too. But first we must go on a bug expedition.”
Orville was beside himself with joy. “I don’t know what an expedition is, but I love anything with bugs!”
I, being older and wiser, said, “An expedition is a search.”
“Correct,” Amelia said. “We must search for a dung beetle!”
Orville made a face. “To eat for breakfast?”
“I think I get it,” I said. “The dung beetle was considered a magic charm in ancient Egypt. Am I right?”
“Bingo bongo,” Amelia said. “Ancient Egyptians carried around dung beetles called scarabs to protect them from angry ghouls and spirits. We should, too.”
Orville sighed. “Those ancient Egyptians knew how to have fun.”
We ran into the front yard and began digging. We found lots of worms, but no beetles.
“Our problem is that we don’t have any big rocks to look under,” Orville said. “Bugs like living under big rocks.”
There is one person in our neighborhood who has nice big rocks lining his driveway. I knew who it was. And Orville knew who it was. But Amelia didn’t. Do you? I’ll give you a clue. He’s big and mean, and his name is Goliath Hyke. Our neighborhood bully.
We explained the situation to Amelia.
Amelia listened. “I have my ways of dealing with bullies,” she said.
So we tiptoed over to Goliath Hyke’s house. The driveway was empty. The shades were drawn. Either everybody was asleep or nobody was home.
“Not a creature is stirring,” I whispered. “Not even a mouse.”
“Or even a rat,” Orville added.
We crouched and lifted up the nearest rock.
What do you think we saw? One bug? Two?
A whole city’s worth of creatures were scurrying around. Earwigs, springtails, snails, and worms! Nematodes, spiders, slugs, and pill bugs! And beetles? Bazillions of beetles!
“Probably even mites,” Orville whispered. “What a beautiful sight.”
“I agree.” It was beautiful to see all these different little guys, with all their strange-looking body parts, going about their business underneath this rock. It makes you glad to be alive. And big.
“Hello, little buggies,” Amelia whispered. “Which one of you would like to come and help us with our mission? We promise to bring you back.”
Orville scooped up a nice shiny beetle. “Why doesn’t everybody love bugs? They’re so cool.”
We watched the beetle scurry around the palm of Orville’s hand.
“Just think,” I said. “If we had a microscope, we could see another city of even smaller creatures in the dirt.”
Amelia nodded. “And maybe there’s somebody on another planet, looking through a telescope at us.”
We all looked up to the great glorious sky . . . and yelped.
There was Goliath Hyke looming over us.
“That’s MY rock!” Goliath yelled.
All the creatures scurried out of sight, probably feeling very glad at that moment to be small.
Goliath grabbed me by the shirt. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY ROCK?”
It’s a tiny bit hard to think fast when a boy who looks like he would eat you on toast for breakfast is holding you by the shirt.
Goliath tightened his grip. “TELL ME!”
My life began passing before my eyes, which was a bad thing because that usually means you’re about to die. On the other hand it was a good thing because I’ve had a very entertaining life.
Amelia stood up. “My name is Amelia E. Hart. I am an entomologist, as well as an explorer with a great knowledge of ancient Egypt. I am searching for a scarab along with my partners, and I am not accustomed to being yelled at in this manner.”
Speechless, Goliath let go.
Amelia turned to Orville. “Now, Orville. I believe the bug you’re holding is, indeed, a scarab, otherwise known as a dung beetle. It is precisely the bug we need.”
“If—if you f-found it under my rock, it’s mine,” Goliath stammered gruffly.
“I see,” Amelia said. “Then you know it is a rare poisonous biting scarab. One bite from this and blood will ooze from your palms a
nd then your brain will turn into slush and drain down through your nostrils!”
Orville tossed the beetle in the air, and Amelia caught it. She held it out to Goliath. “Would you like it?”
Goliath scowled. “If it’s so poisonous, how come you’re not afraid to hold it?”
Amelia pointed to her backpack. “I have the antidote in there.”
Goliath looked at us, wondering if he should believe her.
“Trust me,” Orville said. “She’s got everything in there.”
“Give me the antidote and the bug,” he growled.
“Certainly,” Amelia said. “But you should know that, although the antidote will save your life, it cannot take away the pain. Right, guys?”
I nodded. “Horrible pain.”
“Truly horrible pain,” Orville added for emphasis.
“I don’t believe you,” Goliath said.
Just then, Amelia screeched, “Ack! I’ve been bit!” She threw the bug back at Orville, dropped to her knees, and howled. “Oh, the pain!” She slapped her hands together and writhed. “Oh, the truly horrible pain!” She opened up her hands. Blood was oozing all over her palms.
Goliath took two steps back. “Uh, maybe I should get my mom. . . .”
Amelia turned to look at us and gave us a secret Riot Brother wink. Then she moaned. “The antidote, Wilbur! Quick!”
I knew just what to do. I rummaged through her backpack until I found something to eat. “Aha, the antidote!” I pulled out a small box of raisins. “We discovered that a chemical in raisins is the antidote. Remember, Orville?”
“I hope so, because Amelia looks like she’s going to die.”
I tried to feed her a raisin, but she rolled and moaned.
“Amelia!” I said. “You must eat the antidote!”
“I’m—I’m going to get some help.” Goliath started to leave.
Quickly Amelia snapped a raisin out of my hand and popped it into her mouth. After one and a half chews, she sat up and let out a big groan. “I’m alive! Thank goodness, the antidote worked.”
Goliath looked at Amelia, then at Orville, then at me. I could tell he wasn’t sure what to believe.